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Dan Vitale

There was once a time and place for a man like the late Boston club owner Richard Rooney, then known as Chet to everyone in the city’s indie rock scene. A local guy from the Charlestown neighborhood, Chet in the early Eighties became the rather unlikely proprietor of a music room above an alleged Mafia bar called the Penalty Box in the nearby North Station area. Although his original idea was for it to be a place for jazz or blues acts, a friend fortuitously suggested he open a punk venue instead. From 1983-87, its open-door booking policy made Chet’s Last Call a virtual clearinghouse for Boston rock at a time when the scene was growing exponentially and hitting a creative peak that nearly matched the glory days of the town’s more famous punk dive, the Rat, back in the second half of the seventies.

Chet was the proverbial gruff-but-goodhearted guy who was a once common staple of older cities. He was a bear of a man usually stationed at the end of the bar, close by the entrance. Although you wouldn’t want to get on his bad side, any beef was usually quickly forgotten. Naturally, the joint wasn’t much to look at: a darkened flight of stairs brought you into a dim, smallish space (capacity was about 175) with orange and gold diagonal wallpaper for a stage backdrop and an incongruous iron railing around the dance floor. Rich Gilbert, guitarist for Human Sexual Response and the Zulus, reminds us that in those days Boston was still a “rough, edgy city” where, in the days before critical-mass gentrification, places like this could be left alone to flourish.

The type of place you didn’t tell your mom about: Chet’s side street entrance is seen next to the fire hydrant. The name of the super-sketchy Penalty Box downstairs bar was inspired by the Big, Bad Bruins who played across the street at the old Boston Garden.

“Chet’s Last Call: A Story of Rock & Redemption” is part of a new micro-documentary trend for music films in this age of more accessible equipment and crowd funding. It’s made for and by many people who were there at the time (it was directed by brothers Ted and Dan Vitale, the latter is the singer for long-time local ska-punk band Bim Skala Bim). That Chet was well-loved by the local rock community is pretty obvious from the film’s opening minutes. Boston rock personalities line up to be interviewed and many are seen in performance footage shot at a pair memorial “Chetstock” shows that took place not long after his passing in December of 2015. Veterans of the scene will love to see clips of the Classic Ruins, Pajama Slave Dancers, Harlequin, Bim Skala Bim, Dogmatics and others, as well as the fun interview segments with local rockers like David Minehan, Ed “Moose” Savage, Barrence Whitfield, Xanna Don’t, Linda Viens, and Kenne Highland—not to mention members of Chet’s family and the folks that worked for him.

Granted, this will all be a bit much for the uninitiated, even if the place did host the occasional out-of-town breakout act (Husker Du, the Beastie Boys) or have the odd rock-celeb hanging at the bar (Stones producer Jimmy Miller, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry). Chet’s Last Call was a provincial but supportive scene—and a rowdy one as well. “A playpen for drunken adults,” is how Ken Kaiser puts it. Ken is also seen in new footage playing with the other Ken (Highland) with the Hopelessly Obscure, whose defiant name and garage-punk power riffing is classic Boston.

Chet was Boston’s youngest club owner then and a savvy music fan, committed to empowering new bands and giving a platform to more outre acts like the Bentmen with their cultish persona (group member Chris Burbul was also part of the production team). With modest cover charges and a clientele that favored cheap Budweisers, Chet was not destined (or even looking) to make a killing. Neighborhood grousing, as well as the club’s lax ways with underage drinking and drug dealing, likely led to its closing in 1987 after a run of nearly five years. Chet became Richard Rooney again, going into rehab and, after re-emerging clean, he went back to school and became a substance abuse counselor. This problematic aspect of the music scene is not shied away from—several musicians like Al Barr from the Dropkick Murphy’s talk candidly about their own addiction-and-recovery experiences. This later part of Rooney’s life story is quietly inspiring and brings full circle the idea of the Boston music scene’s abiding spirit. It makes “Chet’s Last Call: A Story of Rock & Redemption” not just a fine tribute to the man but also to the lasting community he helped foster.

Have you heard about my book “Rock Docs: A Fifty-Year Cinematic Journey”? It’s an alternative history of rock ‘n’ roll, seen through the prism of non-fiction film, with over 170 titles reviewed. You can check out a 30-page excerpt at http://booklocker.com/books/8905.html or by clicking on the book cover image above. If interested in purchasing, you can contact me directly for a special offer and free shipping! Thanks, Rick.
rick.ouellette@verizon.net